How Much Does It Cost To Have A Car’s Paint Ceramic Coated
If you're a car nut, you may have heard of ceramic coating. It’s the newest trend in automotive detailing and auto surface protection. Visit any social media club for nearly any automobile, and the members will be posting up before and after images of their rides pre and post ceramic coating. The end results can be truly amazing. Much of that result, but not all, is due to the professional application of a modern ceramic coating product.
Unlike waxing a car, which is something that any automotive enthusiast is familiar with, a professional ceramic coating application takes many hours of preparation and can take days to be applied in full. This can be pricey, and the majority of the cost to the owner of the vehicle being ceramic coated is not due to the stuff that is in the little ceramic coating solution bottle.
Top Recommendations for Best DIY Ceramic Coatings:
- Best Overall: System X Renew Ceramic Coating Spray »
- Best Value: 20H Advanced Graphene Ceramic Coating for Cars »
- Best For Skilled DIY Car Owners: 10H Adam's Polishes Advanced Graphene Ceramic Coating »
- Best Budget Choice: Chemical Guys WAC22916 HydroSlick Intense Gloss Sio2 Ceramic Coating Hyperwax, Hyper Gloss Shine »
- Best Brand For All Car Care Needs: Meguiar's Ultimate Ceramic Coating »
What is ceramic coating?
Ceramic coatings are generally SiO2 based. If it’s been a while since you balanced redox reactions in chemistry class, this stands for silicon dioxide. If you want to pronounce it right, it’s sili-con, not sili-cone. Silicone is a polymer, and silicon is an element among the metals on the periodic table. Solid silica is another name for silicon dioxide, and it is used for many things, including as an ingredient in tires. It makes them grippy on ice.
Silicon dioxide is hard. If you want to feel it in solid form, simply grab some sand. It’s almost entirely silicon dioxide. Silicon dioxide is also associated with glass production. The wafers that semiconductors are constructed on are also silicon dioxide. We suspect that you get the point. It’s hard. If you can apply a super-thin layer of this stuff to your car’s outer layer of paint, it can help to protect the vehicle.
Ceramic coating used on a car’s paint is made liquid using chemicals by the companies that sell it. The term nano-film or nano-coating is also often used to describe ceramic coatings. When a ceramic coating cures, the coating is hard and durable. The curing takes many hours and is usually done in an environment controlled for humidity and airborne particles.
Ceramic Coating vs. Wax
Is ceramic coating wax? No, it’s not. Wax is a surface coating that has some great protective properties for your car’s finish, but it is not the same thing in any meaningful way as ceramic coatings. You can apply wax over a ceramic coating if you wish, but you cannot apply a ceramic coating over a freshly waxed car.
Ceramic Coating vs. Clear Coat
Clear coat is the name given to the outer layer of paint applied to modern automobiles since the days of Miami Vice. It is a durable clear paint formulation designed to protect the inner pigment layers of paint and primer that overlay the bare metal or plastic of your car’s body. It’s a polymer, not a ceramic, so ceramic coatings and clear coat are not the same thing.
Ceramic Coating - DIY vs. Professional Application
Ask any painter what the most important part of a good job is and she will tell you it is preparation. You need to spend as much time preparing the surface to make it blemish-free, clean, and ready to accept the paint. Rush the prep work, and you will never be able to paint your way to a good result. Applying any surface coating to your car’s paint is much the same.
The paint on a new car is always imperfect. There are swirls and other imperfections that a professional detailer can correct. They do this with special tools, often including sanders with polishing pads, that can sort of “melt” the clear coat back to a more perfect state. There are also small dimples, chips, cracks, and other imperfections that a pro can help to correct so that the final result is a mirror-finish.
A used car will undoubtedly have many more paint imperfections. These include deeper scratches, micro scratches from automated car washes that touch the paint, chips from stones and other high-speed impacts, and chemical blemishes from tree sap, bird poop, and other sources. Before a ceramic coating can be properly applied, all of these items need some attention. Otherwise, you will simply apply a coating over them, and the result will be unflattering to the car’s appearance.
Time, elbow grease, and the know-how of an experienced dealer are how a car is best prepared for ceramic coating. Using solvents, the detailer will also remove all prior waxes and other temporary surface coatings applied by the manufacturer, a car wash, or an owner. This helps to ensure that the clear coat layer is ready, willing, and able to bond with the ceramic coating liquid.
A do-it-yourselfer can apply ceramic coatings. However, the amount of surface preparation required, the special tools, and the special techniques required to prepare the car to accept the coating properly are quite daunting. There are many great DIY vehicle coatings one can buy. Almost all of them will improve the appearance of your vehicle if you follow the instructions. However, there are no shortcuts to perfection.
How much does a professional ceramic coating job cost?
Prices for a professionally-installed ceramic coating typically cost between $1,000 and $3,000. There are many factors that go into the pricing, and surprisingly, the brand of ceramic coating one chooses to have applied does not impact the price very much. It’s the hours or days of prep work that add up. The material costs are roughly a quarter to a tenth of the cost of the job.
It may be no surprise how ceramic coating prices are calculated. Smaller cars cost less. There is less surface to prepare and treat. Older cars require more prep work because the paint is degraded to a larger degree than the paint of a new car fresh from the manufacturer’s factory or dealer lot.
What are the benefits of ceramic coating a car’s paint?
There are two primary benefits to ceramic coating, and they are related. The first is the coating’s ability to shed water. The term used is hydro-phobic. Water doesn't bead up on a ceramic coating like it does on a freshly-waxed paint surface. Rather, it sort of slides away. This has the effect of helping to keep the car cleaner longer, and then when you do wash the car, it is much easier. The dirt doesn’t seem to stick to the surface as it does on a waxed or bare clear coat surface. Owners often cite this ease of maintenance as the primary reason to get a car ceramic coated.
Ceramic coatings are also hard. There is some protection added to the paint. However, this protection has its limits. It will not stop chips caused by stones kicked up on the highway. Nor will it stop a car door from being opened into your car and causing a ding. That kind of damage is not prevented by ceramic coatings.
Will a GMC Sierra AT4X that is driven past a leafy branch in the woods be protected better than a car with a bare clear coat? Yes, but again, there are limits. If you own a black or dark color car, a protective film on the front of the car may still make sense if it is a daily driver.
Because ceramic coatings bond with the paint over which they are applied, they last years, not months like wax. Our reading of many of the coat brand sites is that three or more years is the expected lifespan of a coating. Many offer a liquid treatment that can be applied by the owner periodically to help extend the life and performance of the product.
UV protection is also a common benefit of ceramic coatings that manufacturers claim. However, automakers have figured out how to deal with paint oxidation rather well. Clear coat does a great job compared to older paint technologies with the pigmented paint directly exposed to sun. That said, if you live in a sunny area with no garage, why not get all the protection you can buy?
In addition to the benefits above, ceramic coatings help protect a car from chemical stains (bird poop and the like). They also prevent hard water stains from forming when tap water is left to dry on a car exterior.
What can’t ceramic coatings do?
As we mentioned above, the damage-prevention properties of ceramic coatings are real but limited. Even ceramic coating professionals warn that cars washed with dirty brushes can still add swirls and micro scratches to a car’s surface that has been treated. This warning is for those who can actually see such damage. Light-colored cars viewed with imperfect eyes don’t appear damaged to most vehicle owners, or car washes would be long gone.
What are the downsides to ceramic coatings?
The downsides to professionally-installed ceramic coatings start with price. With prices starting in the low four-figures, this product is not for everyone. Next is the consideration that at some point, it will have lived its useful life and need to be re-applied to regain its benefits. There are steps needed to remove the old coating before a new one is applied, and that also costs money. The last disadvantage is counterintuitive. If you do scratch a car with a ceramic coating, it’s not easy to touch up that small area.
| Vehicle | Ceramic Pro Gold Coating Price* |
|---|
*Pricing estimation provided by Finer Finish Auto Salon in Weare, New Hampshire. Price estimates are for a new car and include full paint correction, preparation, and full ceramic coating.
Are ceramic coatings all hype?
Ceramic coatings are not a scam, nor are they simply new wax formulations. They are a new type of surface treatment that can deliver a new level of protection and a dazzling look to any vehicle when properly applied by a professional. Visit some social media sites for your favorite model to see just how satisfied many owners are with a job well done.
Read more on Owning a Car here.
